The present invention relates to conference or classroom configurations and more specifically to a room layout that supports a limited number of people and that, due to arrangement of furniture and teaching tools, fosters interaction and cooperative learning as well as small group discussions.
Traditional classrooms have been designed to focus attention on one person, a teacher or instructor, typically located at the front of the classroom. Here, the idea has been to configure classrooms based on the premise that instructors teach and students learn and, while there may be some communication between instructors and individual students during teaching sessions (e.g., questions and answers, etc.), small group discussions were to occur outside the normal teaching session hours and communications from students during a teaching session were to flow through the instructor to other students.
To concentrate student attention on an instructor, instructor focused classrooms are typically equipped with a large blackboard or whiteboard along a front wall of a classroom space with large numbers of student chair/desk combinations or chair/table combinations arranged in rows and columns throughout the remainder of the space to orient students to face the instructor's presentation board. In some cases interactive whiteboards and/or projectors and/or flat screen monitors are used instead of a black board or a whiteboard to enhance instructor presentations. In some cases chair/table combinations include tables or table and chair combinations that are permanently secured in place within the classroom. Permanently secured tables/chairs ensure an orderly appearance and also reduce the amount of noise from moving furniture during class sessions. In other cases tables and chairs are free standing and can be moved around within a classroom to be rearranged.
In at least some cases it has been recognized that in a classroom, in addition to a primary instructor, many students bring experiences, tools, knowledge and other resources to the classroom that can be shared with others to enhance the learning experience. Additional student experiences are particularly prevalent at the college level and above where many students have unique practical work and/or life experiences that relate to classroom topics that all students and instructors can benefit from.
In addition to work and life experiences that students obtain over time, technology has rendered vast amounts of information extremely and readily accessible enabling students to quickly develop useful theories and concepts that are relevant to classroom topics and that are independent of instructor direction. For instance, the Internet enables students to access and study information on almost any topic which can be electronically saved for subsequent classroom presentation. Moreover, classroom data links enable students to access information via the Internet or other networks in real time so that information relevant to classroom topics can be presented to a class by any student at any time during a session.
It has also been recognized that, for at least some subjects, instructor focused classrooms are not always optimal and that the learning and information/concept sharing processes can be enhanced through small group activities. In this regard, some subjects (e.g., lab experiments, preparation for a small group presentation, open discussion of controversial issues, etc.) are simply better handled in small groups. In addition, it is generally accepted that students have different comfort levels when it comes to public speaking and that some students are more comfortable speaking in relatively small groups. Here, some students prefer to test their ideas/theories in small groups prior to presenting to a larger group. Thus, by breaking up into small groups during at least some class sessions or portions of sessions, more information and concepts are shared and student participation is increased appreciably.
Recognizing the value of small group activities and student sharing/discussion, many instructors now encourage and even expect student discussion during teaching sessions and build small group activities into teaching sessions. Here, large group activities are supposed to feel more like informal discussions among equals instead of one way instructor-to-student lectures while small group activities are used to allow all students to get more involved and feel more involved in classroom activities and to share their ideas and theories in the comfortable and relatively less threatening environment of a small group.
Unfortunately, traditional instructor focused classroom layouts impede large group discussions and often impede small group discussions as well for several reasons. First, traditional classrooms usually arrange students so that students are looking at the backs of other students. Here, for a first student to converse with a second student sitting in a row of desks behind the first student, the first student has to either turn around and face the second student or has to raise her voice to a level sufficient for the second student to hear. In some cases teachers at the front of a classroom are forced to repeat comments and questions that students make during class for others in the class to hear. Repeating comments/questions breaks up discussion flow and can result in inadvertent rephrasing of student comments/questions which changes the meanings of the comments/questions from the original intent. In addition, talking loudly is unnatural and uncomfortable for some students and therefore can inhibit full discussion of topics.
Moreover, discussions are often more meaningful and complete when people face each other and look at each other during the discussions. By facing each other during a discussion, students can use body language and facial expressions to gauge whether or not other students are understanding comments being made and can judge how other students are responding to comments made. Where students all face in one direction, if a first student does not turn around to face others when speaking or when being spoken to, communications are less effective.
Second, often student discussion is interleaved with presentation of information by an instructor or by another student via a presentation board (e.g., whiteboard, interactive whiteboard, projector screen or display, etc.) at the front of the classroom and student comments/questions relate to the information presented by the teacher even when the comments or questions are directed toward another student. In many cases, when a student is referring to front board information, the student needs to generally face the information being referenced in order to formulate the comment or question. Thus, in a traditional instructor focused classroom, even when a first student is addressing a second student sitting behind the first student, the first student has to face forward and away from the second student to formulate and make a comment even when the first student would prefer to face the second student when making the comment. Similarly, in order for a first student to follow a comment or question about presented information made by a second student, the first student often has to face the information presented via the board in order to make sense of the comment/question despite wanting to generally face the first student as the comment is made.
Third, in cases where tables or tables and chairs are permanently secured to a floor within a classroom, those tables and chairs cannot be readily rearranged to facilitate small group activities. Even where desks and chairs are freestanding and therefore could be rearranged to facilitate small group activities, often the desks and chairs are not rearranged and instead adjacent students are asked to turn to each other during small group sessions to avoid the distraction of rearranging the desks and chairs. Here, the students do not have a common work surface and are often turned away from each other when memorializing information via a computing device, pen and paper, etc. In cases where desks and chairs are rearranged, the rearranging process is often very distracting and requires valuable class session time to both rearrange and then, at the end of class, to rearrange again into the instructor focused configuration. Moreover, even where desks are rearranged to facilitate group activities, often, while the students may face each other, the desk top surfaces may not abut nicely and therefore the combined desktops may include physical barriers (e.g., gaps between at least portions of adjacent tops) that impede sharing (e.g., movement of paper, devices, etc.) among the students in a small group.
Fourth, even in cases where student desks and chairs can be reconfigured to facilitate small group activities, most teacher focused classrooms do not provide a separate large format presentation board (e.g., whiteboard, blackboard, interactive whiteboard, etc.) for each of the small groups within a classroom. Here, it has been recognized that it is particularly helpful in small groups to have a common large format presentation board of some type for developing group ideas where all members of the small group can see information as it is developed and can comment and make suggestions during the information development process.
One effort to design a classroom that facilitates teacher focused lectures as well as small group lab activities is described in an article titled “Learning Space Design in Action” by Phillip D. Long that appeared in the July/August 2005 edition of Educase Review (hereinafter “the Long article”). The Long article describes a 3,000 square foot TEAL (Technology Enabled Active Learning) classroom that includes thirteen seven foot diameter round tables, 117 chairs, 40 laptop computers, eight projectors and associated display screens, whiteboards, a plurality of cameras and a single lectern. The display screens and whiteboards are mounted to or proximate all four of the room walls that define the classroom space and the projectors are mounted to a room ceiling and directed toward the display screens for projecting images thereon. The cameras are focused on separate portions of the whiteboards to be used by different subgroups of students.
The thirteen tables are arranged in three rows where each row includes three to five tables each. Groups of nine chairs are arranged around each of the thirteen tables. Three laptop computers are provided on each of the tables, a separate laptop to be used by sub-groups of three students at each of the tables (i.e., there are three sub-groups of three students each at each of the tables) to facilitate small group activities. The lectern is located centrally within the classroom space and a teacher's laptop is provided on the lectern.
In use, when a primary teacher lectures, the primary teacher is at the lectern centrally located in the classroom space and students can turn toward the teacher to follow along. The teacher can present information via the projector screens for students to view and the students can turn toward the projector screen closest to their location to view presented information. During small group activities, the sub-groups of three students at each table huddle together around their common laptop or at the space associated with their common laptop and perform group activities. If desired, students adjacent wall mounted whiteboards can use the adjacent whiteboards to facilitate group activities. Students at tables that are not proximate whiteboards mounted to walls can get up and move as groups to an unused whiteboard surface and use that surface to facilitate small group activities. When information is presented via one of the whiteboards, an associated camera can be used to take a picture thereof and the picture can be presented via the projectors to all students in the classroom space.
While the TEAL classroom has features that facilitate lectures as well as small group lab type activities, unfortunately, even the TEAL classroom has several shortcomings. First, because the TEAL classroom was designed for large lectures and small group discussions, not surprisingly, the room has several characteristics that impede large group discussions involving all of the students in the room. To this end, while a primary instructor standing relatively centrally within the TEAL room may be observable by students throughout the TEAL room, the shear size of, and number of students to be accommodated by the TEAL room makes it difficult at best for students on opposite sides of the room to see each other, much less to effectively communicate with each other. For instance, in some cases a first student at a first table on one side of the TEAL room has to look past students at three intermediate tables in order to see a second student at a second table on the opposite side of the room. Communication over three seven foot diameter intermediate tables, each of which accommodates nine students, is a challenge.
Second, where students are referring to common projected information, the students in the TEAL room tend to face the closest projected images. Facing a closest projected image often causes students to look away from other students being addressed. For instance, where a first student at a table proximate one corner of a TEAL room is talking to a second student at a table located at a distant corner of the room and is referring to commonly projected information, each of the first and second students naturally turns away from the other and views the closest projected information which makes communication difficult at best. Exacerbating this tendency to look away from the student being addressed, the large dimensions of the room (e.g., 60 or more feet) make it difficult to clearly see projected images when looking across the room. Difficulty in seeing projected images across the TEAL room is not surprising as the TEAL room was not designed for large group discussions and instead was designed for instructor focused lectures and small group activities where students do not have to communicate across the entire TEAL room space.
Third, while the TEAL classroom chairs rotate, the amount of rotation required for students to directly face all other students during a large group discussion is excessive and can be distracting. For instance, for many of the chairs in the TEAL classroom, students using the chairs would have to rotate through a full 360° in order to face each of the other students within the classroom at different times during a session. While some rotation is acceptable, excessive rotation can be an annoyance to both the student that has to constantly rotate to face other students and other students around the rotating student.
Fourth, while the edges of seven foot round tables may be suitable for three student small group activities, these relatively large tables are not optimal for relatively larger (e.g., 6-8 person) group activities. For example, where nine students are gathered around a seven foot diameter table so that students on opposite sides of the table are separated by at least seven feet, the volume at which students need to speak in order to communicate across the table is greater than the volume that would normally be acceptable in most small group activities where multiple small groups share a single classroom space. Where students have to raise their voices to share ideas, at least some students will remain silent.
Fifth, while most of the tables in the TEAL classroom are proximate whiteboards that can be used by students at the tables, at least a subset of the tables in the TEAL classroom are not proximate a whiteboard and therefore students at this subset of tables have to move from their tables to a distant whiteboard in order to use a common presentation space. It is believed that the inconvenience associated with having an entire small group of students leave a table to use a whiteboard will greatly reduce the extent to which the whiteboards are used for collaborative activities.
Thus, a need exists for a versatile classroom configuration that can facilitate instructor focused lectures, large group discussions and small group activities where students in the classroom can face and have an essentially direct line of sight to any other student in the classroom at any time as well as simultaneously having a direct line of sight to commonly presented information in a large display format. It would also be advantageous if the configuration that achieves the above results were relatively inexpensive.